Personal Firewall Day

I normally try to mark my calendar with all significant events so that I can look and see what is coming up. You'll have to forgive me on this one though- Personal Firewall Day, being marked on January 15, just sort of snuck up on me this year. In my defense though it wasn't even invented until January 14th, 2004. A handful of software and security companies have banded together to declare January 15th Personal Firewall Day in an effort to increase security awareness and get more users to adopt the use of personal firewall software.

The idea originated with Paul Robertson, Director of Risk Assessment with TruSecure. TruSecure is also hosting the official web site of the event whch contains information and advice for computer users on what personal firewalls do and how to use them.

While many of the participating companies have their own personal firewall applications that you can buy, the drive behind this initiative is to educate and help the Internet in general be more secure more than actually selling products.

James Schmidt, product manager for the McAfee desktop firewall, said:

"There are a lot of people in the world who are in the danger zone, because they don't have a firewall. I don't care what firewall people buy--though I would love it if it was mine--as long as they are protected."

The official Personal Firewall Day web site provides information explaining why a user should protect themselves as well as the concept of "in-depth" defense or layering your security.

For more information you can check out the links next to this article. You can also see What Is A Firewall? here on the About.com Internet / Network Security site to learn more about firewalls in general. If you want to find a personal firewall application to use on your computer you can see Top Software Firewall Products or Free Personal Firewall Software both of which contain products from many of the supporting companies behind Personal Firewall Day.

Happy Personal Firewall Day!